Ever Saying Goodbye
by Epiphany Under Moonlight
Summary: Sometimes when one is ready to finally open their heart to what they've needed all along it's no longer there. At times even the strongest surrender, and death is such an easy out...but for those who still live.


And just to save myself, it isn't Anzu, Tea, Serenity, Mai, Isis, or anyone else. Nods head, if you wanna know, ask.

* * *

He stared down at his dinner with somber violet eyes. 

The subtle purple that had seen the birth of monster and the demise of men, which had stared down at the corpse of the mangled bully filled with tears and muttered prayers and condemnation in the same breath were now blank and mirrored, darker than they'd ever seen before.

His dinner plate was brimming with delicious food, made with painstaking effort and care just for him, but the untouched meal was starting to cool and the silence pervading the table choked off any hopes for conversation.

Three sets of eyes watched him as he sat there staring at nothing, saying nothing, not moving at all.

It had been like this for a week.

It puzzled and worried Grandpa Motou, he was used to the child being overwhelmingly happy and careless to the point that he wished he could focus and be a little more mature.

Always running somewhere with his friends, homework and responsibility forgotten, laughing into the night and coming back at all hours. Never seeming to worry about the things that went wrong that he couldn't fix.

Why couldn't he just _grow up_?

...Kami, he'd never had made the wish if he knew that this would be its result.

And his mother, the woman who had birthed him under the strain of blinding sunlight and the reality that the man she loved didn't want anything to do with him…. She had run from his eyes and purity, and hidden away in a university only coming back for long enough to scold his poor grades and untidy room every few birthdays or so...

And now…she was afraid...

When had he grown up so?

Where was the chubby cheeked baby with a penchant for crayons and cookies? The tiniest child on the playground who could never catch the ball?

Her son….her baby….

When had his childhood dissolved so?

Now sitting at their table was an exotic wild thing she couldn't believe had come from her womb.

Hair never imagined or expected, eyes so alluring they charmed strangers who caught sight of them as he walked down the street, wrapped in leather kisses and innocent lace promises and smiling like a king.

A thick fringe of lashes, a laugh of cinnamon and broken glass, and a puzzle hanging around his neck gleaming in the sun.

She didn't approve, she had never approved, but God had she ever had the guts to say anything? To stop, to truly be his mother?

No. She'd allowed him to be beautiful and strange and winced at the gruesome headlines on the newspaper and wondered how snuggle could mix so perfectly with ashes and jasmine as she washed suspicious stains out of his clothes.

How could he be such a child, and yet such an adult….?

Solid cheekbones jutting out and pouting lips that were now pursed in a straight empty line.

...God was he so?

And no one could see the other.

The watcher, the keeper, the protector, the murderer, and the one who had started this whole horrid contemplation. No one saw him, no one knew of his existence, and the one who did chose not to recognize him, as he stared down at his precious child through terrified blood orbs.

Oh he had damaged so much.

The air seemed condensed somehow, and they all breathed it in aware and wondering whether at any moment it would all run out and they would….and she nervously ran her teeth over her lip as she muttered a forgotten prayer and her own petition.

May it not be as bad as it seemed.

May he laugh, sigh, break down and cry and scream and scream and do whatever it took. God may he just be her son and not this stone with dead eyes and a missing spirit.

May he just be Yugi.

God _please_.

But prayers often went unanswered when even gods hid from the horror of it all.

Yugi Motou, himself, didn't care about the staring and the worry.

There was no need to stare, and whisper, and worry and -

- and they were all being so stupid, so pathetic, so….so...mortal...

Nothing was wrong.

Nothing at all.

He'd d just been a lot more thoughtful lately.

Very thoughtful. Couldn't he be thoughtful?

Wasn't he allowed to be thoughtful?

-

Even if it was to the point that his grandfather had pulled him aside to ask him what was wrong several times, and his mother had come for a surprise visit from the university, as if by her very presence alone she could save him.

Stupid, stupid - They were worrying over nothing, he was fine.

Fine...fine.

...and even if...no problem.

It was a sad fact of life...things like this happened all the time no point in letting it affect him.

...people - ...people committed suicide everyday...

He pushed the french fries around his plate and ignored the juicy burger sitting there and smelling so good. He wasn't hungry. Wasn't hungry and wasn't sick...just...tired.

The days had gotten longer and he had realized an endlessness about life he had missed before.

Eternity...

-

His fork scrapped machinely against his plate and the jarring sound set everyone but his teeth on edge.

Just tired.

Not sleepy tired...

He hadn't slept well in a very long time.

Just...

"Can I be excused?", he asked softly and his mother jumped slightly and looked into the scarily cold face of her little boy, she started to say something... but stopped...and he knew that grandfather didn't want him to notice the way he put a heavy hand on her arm and silenced her, he almost felt annoyed at the way her eyes became bright as she stared up at him.

Her son, her little baby boy, the earth's salvation...who had grown into a young man whose heart had been broken...and nodded her head slowly forcing a smile.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He dismissed them all without a single intention and any form of goodbye.

He left then, footsteps delicate and silent as he quickly climbed the stairs and made his way into his darkened room shutting the door and then locking it.

A ghostly figure appeared then, with moonlight casting through the ephemeral form and crimson orbs staring down at him as he climbed into his bed and rolled onto his back staring up at an empty ceiling.

"Aibou...", his eyes didn't flicker, nothing shifted in his expression, nothing changed as he answered the one that he trusted the most, the one he knew would never hurt him, the one that was supposed to keep all sadness from touching him.

"Yes Yami?", and it was toneless, it was empty and cruel, and his soul at it's grayest moment.

It was pain.

"...I...I'm sorry I-"

"Don't."

It was an absolute order if he said something, especially if he said that...he was never going to say another word to him ever again and his Yami was caught between what he knew to be right...

...and what he knew the dear child needed so badly.

"I...I'm sorry she did that aibou..."

"Don't."

He wanted to, he wanted to stop, he wanted to pretend it was safe in this silence but it wasn't...it was a dying moment in his aibou's life, how could he - the great protector let it come to this.

"I'm sorry she's gone.", he said very softly, mindful of the night and how very much it didn't want to be disturbed.

How deep and lulling and suffocating it all was.

"Don't be.", a twisted, bitter smile, eyes fever bright for a moment, and perhaps he shouldn't have pushed as much as he did.

"After all...she wasn't anything to me.", fading light, dying ember, violet glass crushing against itself as the small child fought not to cry.

He bit his lip, it was never supposed to come to this...never supposed to be like this.

He held his breath and said, against his better judgment, but he felt he had to.

"She loved you.",

An excruciating sob in the night.

"**Don't tell me that! I don't want to know**!".

He bit his lip and carefully touched moonshine hair, his pretty son had rolled over and buried his face in his pillows.

"She did and I'm sorry."

The crying was his only response.

"I'm so sorry.",

"**Stop it**!"

"She's dead."

"**Stop it**!"

"But she loved you."

"**_Just stop!_**"

And he did not duck when his child threw a lamp.

The screams of Yugi Motou raced throughout his house as a tortured woman burst into tears at the worn dining room table and an elderly man took the stairs two at a time to find out the cause of an angel's howling.

The screams found themselves out in the darkened streets under the light of the Domino moon, and decided on unfeeling whim to spread through the whole city.

Disturbing all souls living and dead except for one.

Her tombstone was very pretty.

-

A lie, a lie, the biggest lie of all.

Oh how they had lied to him.

Eternity didn't mean forever.

Every possession he had smashed against the walls of his bedroom

Immortality wasn't a promise.

Darkness and light clashed and the shadows reared and struck and hissed.

She was dead. Dead, dead, dead.

His Mother was dead, all his dreams were dead, anything that could have ever been had already passed and he –

He had never even known.

Pounding against his bedroom door as he collapsed, caught by strong arms before he ever hit the floor.

Broken words whispered in so many ways as he bordered on consciousness.

She had loved him….?

A lie, a lie, the damndest lie of all.

* * *

Fini. Review please. 


End file.
